Category: General

Just change a few names and this quote from Graham Linehan clearly applies perfectly in New Zealand as well.

One of the things I find so frustrating about “three strikes and you’re out” is the lack of creativity it displays. A bright idea from the Clinton years that didn’t work for crime and here it is popping up in the digital Britain debate like a middle-aged, overweight boxer trying out for the Olympic team.

In tumultuous times like these, the Government should not be throwing ropes to flailing David Geffens as they sink into the mud. David Geffen thinks that it is vitally important to the future of capitalism that he and his business model be kept alive indefinitely. Why? Because the vast majority of people, including many musicians, still believe that there is no alternative to that business model.

This would obviously be a terrible thing if it were true. But it’s not true.

The advances we’ve made because of technology have suddenly given consumers a dizzying, disproportionate amount of power, and everyone’s still trying to find their feet. But my instinct is that the new connectedness of the world means that there are a million new ways to address the new reality, if only we can calm down enough to bring to the matter a bit of creativity and actually set about finding them.

The importance of creativity is the reason politicians are the LAST people on earth who should be anywhere near this debate, and it’s why I’m always amazed to see artists siding with Mandelson on it.

Graham Linehan, if you don’t already know is variously writer and/or director of The IT Crowd, Little Britain, Black Books, Father Ted, and many other popular British TV series, so you’d think that perhaps he’d know a few things about creativity and about doing business in creative industries.

This brilliant and insane series of YouTube shorts deconstructs Phantom Menace from all directions and in great detail, while simultaneously revealing the terrifying details of the reviewer/narrators life. Hilariously funny, and certainly one of the greatest reviews I’ve ever seen.

I’ve only embedded the first part, there are seven, watch them all if you can.

If the first one doesn’t grab you, you know what to do. (But I’m telling you, you’ll be missing something pretty great.)

I’ve got something to put in you.

Love it.

So we all know that ACTA is being negotiated in secret, against our wishes, and directly opposed to the normal transparent democratic process as carried out in New Zealand.

We also have reason to believe (though due to the highly offensive secrecy, no firm proof) that there are provisions in the Treaty that will completely shaft our ISPs by forcing them to police their own customers, something they’re entirely unqualified to do, and something that requires the deployment of technologies that have been proven to be unreliable at best, and to cause damage to the network as well (by forcing slower throughput rates on EVERYONE, regardless of what they’re doing online).

And that they’re going to fuck the public of New Zealand by reintroducing a guilt upon accusation law. Directly contrary to the wishes of the public, as demonstrated in the mass online and in person protests not long ago.

My proposal is that the ISPs of New Zealand fuck them back.

My proposal is that we make a list of all MED (and other government department, and any private parties) staff involved in these highly offensive negotiations, and blacklist them from service.

Let’s see how they feel about losing their internet connections, their access to news, family contact, local & central government services, online bill paying & banking, and so on.

I don’t think they’ll like it one little bit.

Just an idea.